Choir Notes

The Right Person at the Right Time
From Music and the Spoken Word
Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell • Program 4202

Think for a moment of someone who made a difference in your life. Maybe it was a family member, a friend, a coach, a teacher, a neighbor. It may even have happened a long time ago, but you still remember and cherish that person’s influence upon you.

A young teenage girl thinks of a basketball coach who saw her potential, cared about her, and told her not to quit. A boy thinks of a teacher who helped him believe he was smart and could succeed in school. A new father thinks of a brother who encouraged him though the challenges of parenthood. A middle-aged woman thinks of a neighbor who reached out to her during a heartbreaking time of loss. A thousand other examples could be given of simple moments when the right person at the right time made a big difference in someone else’s life.

A song from the Lerner and Loewe musical Brigadoon pays tribute to the influence one person can have on the life of another:

I saw a man with his head bowed low.

His heart had no place to go.

I looked and I thought to myself with a sigh:

There but for you go I. . . .

Lonely men around me, trying not to cry,

Till the day you found me, there among them was I. 1

It’s humbling to think what our lives might be like without those earthly angels who spread goodness and kindness along life’s pathway. They come into our lives at crucial times to set an example, to give us counsel or encouragement, or simply to be a loyal friend when we need one the most. Without them, we know we would not be quite the same.

All around us are people who need that kind of friend—people “with [their heads] bowed low,” whose hearts have “no place to go.” Now could be someone’s crucial moment, when just the right words or even just the right warmth of friendship might make a difference. To them, you can be the right person at the right time.

1 “There but for You Go I” (1947).